Technical Field
The present invention relates to a multifunctional particle analysis device suitable for performing a variety of analyses on particles suspended in a gas such as air (that is, an aerosol) and to a method of calibrating the same.
Background Art
In recent years, there has been increasing concern over the health effects of fine particles (of size PM2.5 or the like) in the atmosphere, and research and development of devices for analyzing the mass concentration and composition of such fine particles has proceeded on various fronts. Patent Document 1, for example, discloses a particle measuring device in which an aerosol sample is enveloped with sheath air to form that sample into a beam shape, the resulting flow path is irradiated with laser light, and the scattered light produced when the laser light hits the particles is received using a light-receiving unit. This type of device makes it possible to calculate the number and size (or size distribution) of the particles according to electrical signals output in accordance with the received light. Moreover, Patent Document 2, for example, discloses a fine particle composition analysis device in which an aerosol sample is formed into a beam shape using an aerodynamic lens while removing the gas-phase components, and after the particles are captured by irradiating a capturing unit with the particle beam, the particles captured by the capturing unit are irradiated with energy beams to make the particles vaporize, sublimate, or react so as to produce desorption components, and the resulting desorption components are then analyzed. In this type of device, the particles in the aerosol sample are captured very selectively in a relatively small region, and the desorption components produced by irradiating those particles with energy beams are then analyzed. This makes it possible to analyze the composition and mass of the particles efficiently and with high sensitivity. Even more recently, there has been an increased amount of active research and studies in which not only is the number, size, and composition by mass of the particles measured, the resulting data is used to identify the source of the particles. Therefore, there are increasingly high requirements on multifunctional particle analysis devices suitable for performing a variety of analyses on such particles to be measured.